News

Tour de France best young rider Adam Yates has finished amongst the elite group of main contenders at the Giro d'Italia today, consolidating his overall position after 11 stages.

Ahead, Omar Friere (Dimension Data) won from the breakaway, crossing the line one-minute 37seconds ahead of the Yates group.

The 161km route from Firenze to Bagno di Romagna featured four categorised climbs and it was in the last three-kilometers of the final ascent where the action sparked.

A fast tempo set by Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Mérida) and an attack from Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) thinned out the group but Yates held strong.

ORICA-SCOTT teammate Ruben Plaza dropped back from the early breakaway to lead the Yates group down the descent and to the finish.

"The pace was on all stage so it was a hard day," Yates said. "My legs felt pretty good so it’s nice to get through another day feeling strong.”

“Today was the first real mountain stage, the previous stages have just had the one summit to finish, so it was always going to be a popular day for teams to put riders in the breakaway.

“We also had the same idea, and in the end Ruben did a great job to recover and drop back to keep the pace of our group high in the final to limit the time lost to a couple of riders in the breakaway.”

How it happened:

Stage 11 was the third consecutive crucial stage of the 2017 Giro d’Italia.

After some stronger and weaker performances in yesterday’s time trial, the day had all of the ingredients for another shake up.

The battle was on early to make the day’s breakaway and eventually 25 riders broke free, including ORICA-SCOTT’s Plaza.

Two riders, Mikel Landa (Team Sky) and Fraile attacked shortly after and spent the middle part of the race in the lead. The duo were caught on the final climb inside the final 40km and the large breakaway once again found themselves at the head of the race.